I Never Told Her

I Never Told Her…

I walked into work and there she was. This beautiful, slender, Asian woman, as beautiful as the artwork I later found out she created. She could have been a model, but proved to be too intellectual to put up with the industry. Her job in the coming months would be to greet each person with a smile, ask if she could help them with anything, and point them to the right person if she couldn’t. Well, she never really got great at that, but it was easy to overlook. Our friendship, or at least my idea that we had a friendship, was much more important to me.

Sometimes we compared horror stories of how we grew up. She won. She had recently had a major surgery. I had merely had my appendix removed. She won. She also won at many other things, like how to listen, be a friend, show love. She was giving, so giving it was enough to make you guilty. She was always thinking of others, and I always forgot to go that extra mile for her.

I was struggling to keep my head above water while attempting to prepare for a meeting. I finally had a minute to sit down and rest, however I wasn’t going to be able to eat. But she had lunch all ready for me. A lovely veggie bagel topped with turkey, lettuce, cheese, and cream cheese. It was a sandwich similar to what we had bought a few weeks ago at an overpriced bagel company, but this was much better. I asked her to sit with me and have lunch, but she declined. She said that she had already eaten and didn’t have time to sit. I was disappointed, but understood.

She was moving out of her sisters’ house into a room she would rent from an elderly woman. Going through her things she came up with three coats. She gave two of them to a coworker, and one she gave to me. She insisted that she would never need to wear them. This coat, when I wore it, made me feel empowered. A long, brown leather, fully lined coat. I wore that coat and was a woman in charge, ready to take on the world. I never told her how it made me feel, and how lucky I was to have received it from her.

For my birthday, she gave me earring hers sister made. She hand wrote an inside joke about a movie we both quoted everyday. The movie epitomized how we felt working in our office; “Ummmm, yeah. I’m going to have to ask you to come in on Saturday…” Her card was wonderful. She made me feel so good about myself. She embarrassed me how much she celebrated my birthday, even I wasn’t that excited about it.

At one point we went to an Indian restaurant. We ate, talked, and laughed. Our ritual was to go and eat somewhere we had never been when we got paid. Every other week we indulged ourselves in exploring new tastes. She bragged how she was culturing me, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Our favorite place eventually became a Japanese restaurant. In the coming months we would go there numerous times, twice with her sister, once with our boss.

The last time we went, we went by ourselves on a Friday. We each got the same entrée, salmon in a light barbeque glaze. Our favorite side was the baked spicy acorn squash. Our visit that day was my treat. She had paid for another meal, and I still owed her. We had a great time, we ate slowly. Our waitress knew us as regulars by now. She informed us about happy hour that lasted all day on Thursdays and Sundays. A happy hour that lasts all day? We laughed at the irony, and agreed that we would have to come back sometime. Who could refuse half priced sushi, even if it was the next to last day when you weren’t supposed to eat fish at restaurants? At the end of date, as was her custom, she plunged her hand into the mint jar and pulled out too many mints and handed them all to me. She dove in again, this time pulling a stash out for herself. We climbed into my car and drove back to work. We started arguing about a popular TV program she had been watching. I thought I was right, she insisted she was right, and I gave in. She told me I reminded her of her sister, such conviction and tenacity in our beliefs and opinions. By this time we had eaten all of the mints provided.

“I’m beginning to think we could really be friends.”
“Could be friends? We weren’t already?” I responded.
“No, we’re friends. Just, you know, good friends.”
“I suppose I could handle that.”

That’s all I said. I didn’t say “Do you know how lucky I would be to have a friend like you? Someone so giving of themselves, so beautiful inside and out?” I also didn’t say “You are such an amazing woman, surviving all that you have. You are bigger than this world, it can hardly accommodate you. I have learned so much from you. Thank you.”

She was supposed to call me that Friday night. We were going to discuss the rest of our working day. She never called, and I didn’t call her back. I was engrossed in my own life, again. I didn’t take the time to see how she was, or what I could do for her. The next day, Saturday, I received a phone call. It was work.

“Are you sitting down? I have some bad news. She passed away today…”

I still owe her. I owe her the knowledge that she was a wonderful woman. I owe her for the fact that I was not the friend she needed, or the person she deserved. She was a spirit stranded on earth, beyond her years. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for her.